Azalee CURTIS Sentenced to Term in Reformatory Following Brutal Attempt to Murder Relative

Miss Azalee CURTIS, 17-year-old Humphreys County girl, was
sentenced in Waverly on Tuesday of this week, to a period of five years in the state
reformatory. She had been arrested and was bound over to the present term of circuit
court of that county which adjoins Hickman County on the west, at a preliminary hearing in
Waverly on last Friday, charged with one of the most brutal crimes in the history of this
section of the state.
The complainant in the sensational case is Mrs. Erwin CURTIS, 45
years of age and aunt of defendant, who charges that she was beaten into a state of
semi-consciousness by the infuriated girl, dragged from her home and thrown into a well.
The victim caught to a projection of the well near the top, the enraged girl later
securing a pole and beating the unfortunate woman about the head and shoulders and
breaking the left arm. The left hand is said to have been beaten into a pulp by
vicious jabs of the pole in the hands of the girl before the victim's hold was loosened
and the body fell to the ten feet depth of water in the well. Throwing the weapon
into the well as a final attack is said to have been the means of saving the injured
woman's life. After sinking into the water she rose to the surface and grasped the
upright pole with the uninjured right arm, thereby keeping the head above water for a
period of three hours when she was rescued by relatives.
Dr. W. W. Slayden and Sheriff Smith of Waverly, were called to
the CURTIS home where the condition of the patient was pronounced critical. The
arrest of the girl followed at her home with her father, Jack CURTIS, of Deer Creek near
McEwen. She is said to have denied any knowledge of the crime at the time of her
arrest, later confessing the offense in detail. The only reason given was that of
revenge, the girl stating that her aunt had accused her in connection with the loss of a
pair of slippers from her home and which disappeared about the time the girl returned to
the home of her father after a several weeks stay with the family of her aunt.